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McLellan willing to be courted for Edmonton coaching job

Apr 1, 2014; San Jose, CA, USA; San Jose Sharks head coach Todd McLellan watches the game from the bench during the first period against the Edmonton Oilers at SAP Center at San Jose. Mandatory Credit: Bob Stanton-USA TODAY Sports

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VIENNA, Austria – When Todd McLellan checked into the five star hotel which has been home to the legends of opera for more than a century, he looked somehow out of synch with the surroundings.

It might have been the shorts and sweatshirt. It might have been the two-day growth and the airplane hair.

Quite frankly, he looked like an unemployed … well, hockey coach.

Except for one thing. The smile.

Todd McLellan, quite clearly, is very happy to be here and coaching Team Canada to the IIHF World Championship in Prague next week and very excited about the prospects for the new challenges ahead in his career.

Many consider the coach who parted ways with the San Jose Sharks to be the favorite to coach Connor McDavid and the new era Edmonton Oilers under new CEO Bob Nicholson and new President of Hockey Operations and G.M. Peter Chiarelli.

Handing his hotel room key to his son Tyson, McLellan grabbed a chair in the lobby and sat down to do his first interview of the new adventure.

Now that the Oilers have won the right to pick McDavid No. 1 overall, now that Nicholson had been made the boss of everything and Chiarelli had been hired as hockey boss, is he ready to declare “I want that job!”

He laughed.

“I want a job.”

McLellan showed no reluctance to discuss the Oilers job.

“Edmonton has always been an interesting spot for many people, I think,” said the coach, who much like what happened to the new general manager in Boston, made the playoffs every year until missed for the first time this year, only to find himself out the door.

“It’s a team with a rich history and they have some good players there. Now you add in McDavid, Bob taking over and Peter coming in. I really do think there were good people there before. What job descriptions they end up in, I’m not sure. But there will be a very strong team and group of people there.

“For any coach to consider all of that, it has to be a positive. It has to be exciting, not just for myself but for anybody. With all those good players there, it will eventually get going the right way. I think some of the changes and the No. 2 draft pick on Connor McDavid’s year make it enticing.”

McLellan hasn’t been an unemployed hockey coach for a whole week yet, but like Chiarelli, he’s not going to have to worry about not being able to find a new job.

“I’ve talked to some teams already,” he said.

“Edmonton is one of them.

“I talked to Bob Nicholson and MacT at that point,” he said.

McLellan, like Chiarelli, has never been fired before.

It’s interesting that McLellan ended up with a 311-163-66 regular season record as a coach in San Jose and Chiarelli ended up with a 386-233-85 regular season record as a general manager in Boston.

They’ve experienced the same things the past few days.

“The first day was real emotional. Then it turned into a real supportive day with the number of calls, texts and e-mails. Hockey is a really caring world. That was nice because it created work. I want to get right back into it.

“After that it turned into a bit of excitement. It was like I was re-energized a little bit and ready to go again.

McLellan said the energy and focus is going to be on Team Canada but when there’s down time he’s willing to be courted a little bit while he’s here. He said he thinks there’s some dating to be done before a coach and a G.M. can even start to get serious no matter how attractive one may look to the other.

“I look at it when a coach joins an organization or an organization hires a coach, it’s like a marriage. You have to court your wife a little bit. You have to make sure she’s the right one for you and that you’re the right one for her. You have to know you have similar beliefs and ideas going forward.

“That takes some time and some dates, if you will.

“I think that’s the process that some of these teams are in and that the coaches without jobs are in.”

The over-under on the date when Nicholson and Chiarelli arrive in Prague might be about May 7. I have no idea if there’s a kiss cam in the O2 Arena or not.